I have watched during the last week as bloggers and the MSM have finally started to focus on the real story in the case involving the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name; the fact that there is a rogue faction at the CIA who opposed the policies of the President of the United States and tried to defeat those policies by selectively leaking classified information to friendly reporters.

Last summer as I began a series of posts on this subject, there was literally no one focusing on this aspect of the Plame controversy outside of Tom McGuire at Just One Minute. On July 13, I wrote:

This is the dirty business of government being exposed to the light of day. On the one hand, you have the White House with a President duly elected that has made the tough decision to go to war. On the other side, you have a political faction at the CIA who can justify their opposition to the Administration by chalking it up as differences in policy. The amazing number of selective leaks prior to the election that constantly put the administration on the defensive with regards to what they knew about WMD before the war was another manifestation of the partisanship of this faction. Given the mountains of intelligence analyses prior to the Iraq war on WMD, to cherry pick opposing views and then leak them to the press was an outrageously partisan attempt to discredit the President.

If Joe Wilson could sit by a pool sipping mint tea and talk with a few officials, why couldnâ€™t such an inquiry be handled by agency personnel already in country? Why a â€œspecial mission?â€

The answer is that the CIA wanted to make sure they got the right answers from the â€œinvestigation.â€ So they send glory boy Wilson on a made up errand to insure that the intelligence is â€œfixedâ€ to absolve the Niger government of colluding with the Iraqis in what two separate inquiries have concluded was a real attempt to circumvent sanctions to purchase uranium. And to obscure that fact, Wilson has to make it appear that his talent and contacts alone were the reason he was sent to Niger not that his wife was part of a faction out to discredit the Administrationâ€™s WMD claims prior to going to war with Iraq.

This may in fact be the real cover-up. What started as a policy dispute between WMD experts at CIA and the â€œNeoconsâ€ in the Bush Administration may have escalated to include the CIA selective leaking of classified information in order to swing an election. And right in the middle of this cover up may be the Wilson-Plame connection regarding the Niger mission.

On August 2nd, I covered more selective leaking from the CIA for The American Thinker. This time it was a National Intelligence Estimate with regards to Iran’s nuclear ambitions:

The point is that regardless of recent steps to reform our intelligence capability, it appears that weâ€™re still working with a dysfunctional system where agency personnel feel perfectly comfortable with leaking classified information in a bid to influence both Administration policy and the political process. No one expects everybody to agree on everything. But the American people have a right to expect that the unelected bureaucrats who work at the CIA allow policy making to reside with those we have entrusted for the task â€“ the elected representatives of the people.

Now we have a host of bloggers and mainstream media columnists calling for an investigation of the CIA. Victoria Toensing:

“The CIA conduct in this matter is either a brilliant covert action against the White House or inept intelligence tradecraft. It is up to Congress to decide which.”

Having Wilson go public was very useful to the CIA, especially the division where his wife worked â€” because it served to shift blame for failed “slam dunk” intelligence claims away from the agency. To say that Bush “twisted” intelligence was to presume â€” falsely â€” that the CIA had gotten it right.

When the White House ineptly tried to counter Wilson’s tall tales by revealing that he wasn’t an expert and his wife set up the trip, the CIA demanded a criminal probe â€” and then itself broke the law by leaking that news

We believe that someone needs to answer the questions raised recently by Joseph F. DiGenova, a former federal prosecutor and independent counsel:

Was there a covert operation against the president?

If so, who was behind it?

These aren’t the musings of the tinfoil-hat brigade. A sober-minded case can be made that at least some people in the CIA may have acted inappropriately to discredit the administration as a way of salvaging their own reputations after the intelligence debacles of 9-11 and Iraqi WMD.

But the Agency’s double-dealing on evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction begs another question: Was the CIA an honest broker of information that seemed, early on, to link Iraq to the 9/11 attacks?

Then there are bloggers like Michael Barone,Mark Noonan, and Scott Johnson who are calling for an investigation of the CIA. While I wholeheartedly endorse such a probe, the question is how focused could such an investigation get?

The wide range of malfeasance on the part of the CIA has been breathtaking. Their leaking of classified information has encompassed so many aspects of American policy all over the world that it must be the work of some very senior intelligence officials. Only top level officials would be in a position to gather and collate such wide ranging intel to be put in regular briefings for policy makers or be the ones giving the briefings themselves. The latter is less likely but not out of the realm of possibility. In short, we aren’t just looking at the kind of leaking done by low-level analysts who may be disgruntled with the way the Administration used a specific bit of intelligence. We are talking about people at the highest levels of the Agency who are in a position to decide what intelligence is passed on to policy makers and what intelligence is withheld.

And no investigation would be complete without hauling before the Committee members of VIPS - the so-called “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity” whose membership includes some of the most radical left wing Democratic party partisans working today. Did members of this group act as conduits between their friends still working at the Agency and national security columnists like Walter Pincus and Nick Kristoff? Inquiring minds want to know, indeed.

The last major Congressional investigation of CIA activities was the Church Committee. Most inside observers at the Agency claim that the revelations and subsequent fall out from the Committee’s hearings nearly destroyed the CIA. Morale hit rock bottom when Admiral Stansfield Turner became the DCIA under President Carter. Turner dismantled our human intelligence capability (HUMINT) and stressed the gathering of intel by so-called “National Technical Means.” We found out to our detriment on 9/11 how vitally important HUMINT is to the overall picture intelligence analysts try to draw for policy makers.

The satellites and other technical means we have at our disposal to gather and analyze intelligence are the most closely guarded secrets in America. By leaking some of the classified intelligence about Saddam’s capabilities and intentions prior to the war, the leakers have given our enemies hints as to what we can see, what we can hear, and what we can read from nations and individuals that try and hide these things from prying eyes. In short, leaking by Agency partisans did far more damage to national security than the “outing” of an Agency staffer whose husband apparently bragged about her CIA employment to anyone and everyone who he met.

So any investigation of the CIA must be done with considerable care. It cannot be a scattershot fishing expedition. Too much is at stake to cripple the work done by the CIA in this time of war. But an investigation must be done in order to rid the Agency once and for all of people who place partisan or career considerations above the good of the nation.

I have been impressed with the right on content of RWNH since day one.

That you hit the nail on the head long before most others is no surprise to those of us who read you, that’s but one of the reasons I have been reading and will continue to read RWNH. Right Wing Nut House is consistant quality.

Wait a minute. I want to jump on this band wagon, too. My speculative blather in this vain goes all the way back to July 21, 2004, where I said,

“Here’s an imaginative scenario. Val and pals from the CIA send Joe on an African junket, expenses paid, for the purpose of finding nothing. This, they hope, will weaken any possible case for military action against Iraq. Joe’s exhaustive eight day trip culminates in success. Jackpot! He found it – nothing! Unfortunately the administration made their case anyway citing British intelligence. What to do now.”

I never did get my trackbacks to work, Rick. I’ll have to try it again sometime.

9

David Said:
10:35 am

We could start with the thought that Bush felt he should keep Clinton’s CIA director even after 9/11. How timid is that? Is Bush really in charge of the government? Right now it looks to me like Soros, Kerry and their friends are running things behind the scenes. Maybe this is why Kofi hasn’t resigned. He’s in charge too. And Carter sure knows how to speak up. Clinton, of course, is too busy with other things to be of much help. But Bush and Cheney are looking more and more like two guys on a island. I was going to say they look like the guys at the alamo. But those guys, although outnumbered, at least knew how to fight back.

That France had a lot to lose with the fall of Saddam is an understatement.

11

Western Infidels Said:
12:12 pm

Do you seriously wish to imply that starting a war on false grounds is for “the good of the nation?”

Attempting to find out the truth, even if it meant discrediting what the President told us about WMD, even if it meant becoming embroilled in a career-ending scandal, was the most patriotic course of action of all.

12

David McCourt Said:
12:49 pm

One honorable member of the left—Christopher Hitchens—was on to the CIA’s game as erly as you were. He wrote in July:

“A fairly senior CIA female bureaucrat, not involved in risky activity in the field, proposes her own husband for a mission to Niger, on the very CIA-sounding grounds that he enjoys good relations with the highly venal government there, and in particular with its Ministry of Mines. This government, according to unrefuted intelligence-gathering from British and other European intelligence agencies, is covertly discussing sanctions-breaking sales of its uranium to a number of outlaw regimes, including that of Saddam Hussein. The husband, who has since falsely denied being recommended by his wife, revisits his “good contacts” in Niger for a brief trip and issues them a clean bill. The CIA in general is institutionally committed against the policy of regime change in Iraq. It has also catastrophically failed the country in respect of defense against suicidal attack. (“I wonder,” Tenet told former Sen. David Boren on the very first news of 9/11, “if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training.” Wow, what a good guess, if a touch late. The CIA had failed entirely to act after the FBI detained Zacarias Moussaoui in Minnesota in August.)

Could it be that there is an element of politicization in all this? That there is more to Mr. Wilson’s perfunctory “no problem” report from Niger than first appears? I would describe this as a fit, if not indeed urgent, subject for public debate. But the CIA has a reserve strength. It can and does leak against the Defense Department. But if anyone leaks back at it, there is a nutty little law, passed back in 1982, that can criminalize the leaker. Karl Rove is of course obliged to observe this law and every other one. And it appears that he did, in that he did not, and did not intend to, expose Valerie Plame in any way.

But who is endangering national security here? The man who calls attention to a covert CIA hand in the argument, or the man who blithely says that uranium deals with psychopathic regimes are not in train when they probably are? And we cannot even debate this without the risk that those who are seeking the true story will end up before a grand jury, or behind bars!”

Let’s help the Committee. Mac found a post on TPM by Larry C. Johnson which suggests he knows the name of the leaker..I passed it on.

In 2004 he was running around urging CIA employees to leak. I know it’s out there, if you find it pass it on..

15

ed Said:
2:08 pm

While I don’t have much positive to say about President Bush’s policies, he is the President. CIA employees that attempt to create their own foreign policy or damage administration policy by leaks or other means are behaving in a way that borders on treason. (Internal procedures are in place for legitimate whistleblowers.) We settle our political differences by debate and ballots. Rogue operatives in the intelligence community need to be flushed like a low water volume toilet – repeatedly, until the t**** are finally gone.

I lived in that rat-hole called Niger from 1962-1964 as an early Peace Corps Volunteer. It was my experience that people there would generally say anything that you wanted to hear, just to keep you, as a “pink” person happy. So, obviously, Wilson heard what he wanted to hear, and no more.
Also, I would like to know if Wilson is fluent in French (the official language of Niger) and if not in French, how about Djerma, Haussa, or Fulani? Whom did he actually talk to? And where was the station “chief” or CIA cover person when all this was going on? When I was there the CIA person spent more time screwing the natives than anything else (though he was a nice, friendly guy who ran great parties for his friends.)